Drizly, the mobile shopping app that connects users with delivery-friendly liquor stores, is today announcing the close of a $13 million Series A funding round, led by Polaris Partners. Existing investors Suffolk Equity Partners also participated alongside First Beverage Group and others.
Drizly offers a mobile app that lets users order all kinds of spirits, beer and wine direct to their location. The system integrates with the POS system in liquor stores so that orders come through from the mobile app and are ready to be delivered without a lot of leg-work from the vendors themselves. Except, of course, for the delivery.
Drizly intentionally hooks up with liquor stores who already power their own delivery, saving the startup from having to build out its own delivery infrastructure.
The company wouldn’t be super specific about growth traction, but did share that the service is handling orders in the low tens of thousands each month, with around 25 percent growth each month across their major markets.
Drizly is currently operational in Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Boulder, Chicago, Denver, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York City, Providence, Seattle, St. Louis, and Washington D.C.
The company hopes to get to 30 markets by the end of the year, and this latest round of financing should help accelerate that expansion.
The Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America (WSWA) also recently partnered with Drizly as their technology partner to help bring the liquor industry into the 21st century. This gives Drizly direct access to a network of wholesalers, who can help Drizly navigate the world of vendors as it tries to get hooked into as many liquor stores as possible.
Drizly makes money by charging a monthly licensing fee for the technology. That fee varies based on the location of the store, volume of transactions, and a number of other factors to make sure that each vendor is still making a profit off of using the Drizly platform.